Bishop Flores

An amazing essay, by one of the best bishops in the American Church, from what I can see.

An excerpt:

“Polarization in the Church happens when we lose sight of the luminous Center from which all Catholic life and teaching flows. We are often speaking at each other from points of reference that emanate from the Center but, like different points on different spokes on a wheel, we appear frustratingly distant from one another. The luminous Center is the person and then the teaching of Christ himself. Our conversations and even our arguments, especially as they address the Social Teaching of the Church, are helpful in the Church only if we are all looking at the Center when we speak. . . .

“Pope Francis speaks of the “throwaway culture”, as a description that encompasses all that undermines the human good today. We use and throwaway unborn children, immigrants, laborers, the disabled, the elderly, the terminally ill, and our own natural environment. This is the condition that marginalizes and creates the “invisibles”. Returning, then, to the point about the Christological center, for us, the dramatic clarity about the mystery of human vulnerability, and the great dignity it entails, is provided by the image of Christ in the womb of Mary, and Christ discarded and hanging on the Cross. The unborn and the immigrant, the death-row inmate and the street person are present in that continuum. In Catholic Faith, our salvation depends on how we respond to the Christ in those places. In his visit to the United States, Pope Francis called for the replacement of a throwaway culture, and a culture of radical individuality, with a human culture that “protects and cares for”, a culture of “radical care”. This is so important. Whoever is vulnerable, and at risk,” is brother or sister to me.” In the end, this includes everybody.”